The present application generally relates to an inventory management. More particularly, the present application relates to tracking an age of a perishable product at each location in a supply chain.
Currently, companies (e.g., FedEx®, UPS®, DHL®, Wal-Mart®, etc.) use RFID (Radio-Frequency-Identification) and/or barcode scanning technologies to track items (e.g., packages, products, clothes, foods, etc.) in their warehouse and/or inventories. Inventory management systems/programs (e.g., IntelliTrack® Software from IntelliTrack®, Inc., etc.) using RFIDs and barcodes work well if a single party controls its supply chain and the diversity in product types and packaging configurations is relatively small (e.g., the number of different product types is less 1,000). A supply chain refers to entities, organizations, resources and/or people involved in moving a product from its manufacture to its consumers. For examples, UPS® attaches a unique barcode on each item and handles each item from transportation to a delivery. However, if a supply chain is managed by diverse parties (e.g., wholesale stores, retail stores, distributors, etc.), using RFIDs or barcodes to manage inventories in the supply chain can be costly. Perishable food products are typically packaged in a wide variety of forms and have a large volume (e.g., more than 1,000 products) of movement through a supply chain making individual barcode or RFID tracking impractical. As a result, product manufacturers and retailers may not be able to identify poorly performing entities of the supply chain, for example, a retail store that has an excess of products in inventory near their expected end-of-life date.